Well, I can confirm that there was a soccer game played on Sunday evening in Smithfield. RIFC and Loudoun United drew 0-0 for the second time this season. This time there were cold, wet conditions that complemented (and contributed to) the play on the field. The result leaves RIFC 5th in the Eastern Conference and Loudoun United 9th, just below the playoff line. We’ll take a look at what went down on the field on Sunday before getting to any takeaways there might have been.

There weren’t many moments to talk about in the first half (or really in the entire game as a whole). Loudoun started out as the better team but overall I think the first half was pretty even. They had more possession but weren’t able to create any good chances or even a shot on goal in the first half. We weren’t able to create much either, with the only chance that really stood out being this free kick taken by JJ Williams:

It was a little surprising to see JJ taking this one but it ended up being a decent effort. Outside of that, there really was nothing else to see. As I said, Loudoun had the ball and they got into some dangerous areas a few times but their moves were so insignificant that I don’t even want to spend the minute it would take to find a clip and put it in this blog.

There was a little bit more to see in the 2nd half and Koke produced an important save here in the 56th minute:

It was a good near-post header from Zach Ryan and Koke did really well to put it behind for a corner. The best chance for either team came when Loudoun’s Jacob Erlandson put in this wonderful header off of a corner:

Erlandson made a great run there and was really unlucky to see his header hit the post. Of course, I’m not too upset for him.

Lastly, it’s worth looking at what I think was our best chance of the night. It came in the 79th minute from substitute Joe Brito:

Frank Nodarse being the one to carry the ball into the box there says a lot about our attacking play (we’ll get to that soon). Brito made the run that we’ve seen so often from him off the bench lately but wasn’t able to produce the finish.

Yes, that really was it. A draw seemed like a fair result on the balance of play. Loudoun will be disappointed though, as a win would have put them 7th and 2 points ahead of the teams they’re competing with for the final two playoff spots. For RIFC, the draw wasn’t terrible but a win would have pushed us up to 4th and given us a real shot at a home playoff game. That isn’t off the table yet but it will be difficult as we head into our final two games of the season.

Honestly, not a lot. The main takeaway for me is that we don’t have the depth to make up for missing some of our key players. But that’s something I think we pretty much all knew. This game just provided it for us in action. This is the lineup we went with on Sunday:

As I’m sure you all know, there was no Jojea Kwizera, Noah Fuson, or Albert Dikwa in this one. Kwizera is on international duty, Fuson was suspended, and Dikwa is injured. I wrote about the difficult spot we were in in the Prematch Lookout and I had two suggested lineups coming into this game. The first one was almost this exact lineup, the only difference being that I had Gabi Alves at LWB instead of Morris Duggan. The second option I had was a 4-3-3 but I knew that was highly unlikely. It was just a fun exercise to think about what might work with the players available.

Our two big issues going forward in this one were a lack of width and a lack of creativity. Regarding the width, we were obviously going to struggle in that area without our best wide players in Kwizera and Fuson. One of the two almost always plays off the left and without them it was glaring what we were missing. Khano went with Morris Duggan there and while I really like him as a player, he isn’t a wingback. He fits best as a left sided center back in our back 3 or as a really defensive left back in a back 4. Duggan is really strong defensively and great on the ball but he isn’t going to get forward and hug the touchline.

If we were going to play Duggan as a more defensive LWB then we really needed our guy on the right to get forward. Stephen Turnbull had a disappointing night in that regard. He didn’t cause many problems down our right attacking side. Loudoun do have some good players on their left side defensively so that may have contributed. At the end of the day, all you really need to know is that we had Frank Nodarse at RWB late in this game. That’s how depleted we were in wide areas.

There really wasn’t much fun out there. Noah Fuson currently leads the league in assists and we missed him dearly. We had no one on the field who could create chances for our forwards. With the lineup we put out there, I can only guess that our strategy would have been to hope Herivaux and Holstad could break up play high up the field and create quick transition moments. This didn’t come to fruition. And without a natural creative player on the field, we found it hard in possession. We often played the ball long to JJ Williams but he didn’t have enough support around him to lay the ball off to.

This issue with creativity was eventually solved in the 2nd half when Jack Panayotou came on for Mark Doyle in the 61st minute. Jack P got into good areas and really helped us push for the 3 points. Without any wide players off the bench, our substitutions were really a double down on our strategy of just trying to win in central areas. In the end it was too little, too late and we couldn’t get a winner.

For all of my frustrations about our attack or lack thereof, I have to give credit to Koke and our defenders. We were really solid defensively in front of Koke and when we did give up chances, he made some nice saves to keep the clean sheet. Koke won the player of the match and it was well deserved. We usually focus more on his play with the ball at his feet but he deserves a lot of credit for doing the primary part of being a goalkeeper: making saves.

Lastly, don’t think I forgot about someone…..

Mark Doyle. Mark….Doyle. He had easily his worst performance of the season. And seeing that he hasn’t made many contributions this season, that kind of says a lot. I’ll always remember the work he did to help force that own goal against New Mexico United. It was the first goal in club history after all. He also scored our first goal in the derby away at Hartford earlier this season. But he was such a massive disappointment on Sunday. It couldn’t have come at a worse time either as we really needed him to step up with Dikwa out injured. I’ve defended Doyle at times this season as I’ve him take up some good positions and have some good touches. But he never got into any goal-scoring positions and looked lost with the ball at his feet. His performance is up there for the most frustrated I’ve been watching a player this season.

As I said earlier, we’re currently 5th in the Eastern Conference. Here’s what the standings look like:

I’ll say it again: the frustrating thing here is that a win would’ve pushed us up to 4th. But more importantly, we would have clinched a playoff spot with the 3 points. We’re still in a good position with two games remaining but we can’t get complacent. In order to have a chance at 4th, we probably need to win our remaining two games and hope that both Indy Eleven drops points in one of their remaining games and Tampa Bay continues to drop points. No matter what happens though, it’ll be an exciting last two weeks of the season.

I’ll be back this week to look ahead to our game in Charleston on Saturday night. For more on this draw against Loudoun, check out Timmy’s Player Ratings. He’s tough as always and I mostly agree on his takes on this one. But I’ve spent way too much time on this game now and if you’ve read this far, I appreciate you going through this with me. So let’s all move forward together. UP THE TIDE!